GLP's 5th Open Science Meeting: Pathways to Sustainable and Just Land Systems

Download the List of Sessions (pdf)!

Updated 29-10-2024

Theme 1: The State of the World

Organizer(s): Andrea Pacheco, Jan Börner

Understanding how humans impact biodiversity - the diversity of life on earth - has become a new frontier in socio-ecological research. On the one hand, a wealth of new metrics and methods to monitor biodiversity change have become available in the past several years (e.g., global databases such as Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), or global indicators such as the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII)). On the other hand, different research efforts are currently taking advantage of such developments to study the human impacts on biodiversity change or loss. In particular, because habitat loss is the primary driver of biodiversity loss, several recent studies aim to quantify and characterize agriculture-driven impacts from land-use change using a variety of approaches. These include life cycle analyses (LCA) or multi-regional input-output models (MRIOs) and the use of footprinting metrics, modelled biodiversity products, as well as other quasi-experimental set-ups that focus on impacts on specific species, or even pairing multidimensional biodiversity indicators with socioeconomic drivers.This session aims to spotlight recent, innovative research on these agriculture-driven impacts on biodiversity, specifically across the tropics, where biodiversity is highest. This may include improvements in LCAs or MRIOs, as well as impact assessments using new, multidimensional biodiversity indicators. We aim to discuss the questions: What do these new metrics tell us about agriculture-driven impacts on biodiversity? And, how do these impacts differ from what we know of land-use and land-cover studies? Moreover, we aim to discuss the causal implications of such featured approaches, as policies or interventions (e.g., the European deforestation regulation) may err in targeting footprints rather than the underlying mechanisms driving these. Overall, we hope to foster a discussion that moves beyond land-use/land-cover change towards deeper understanding of human-nature impacts, and the action points that can transform this relationship in the future.

Organizer(s): Kimberly Carlson, Matthew Hayek, Sonali McDermid, David Kanter, James Gerber, Paul West, Carole Dalin

Much is being asked of the world’s land to meet ambitious climate mitigation and adaptation goals. For instance, land is expected to store carbon reliably in soils and biomass while continuing to feed a growing population and support diverse and resilient ecosystems under a warming and more extreme climate. Government climate change policies, as well as voluntary carbon markets, are already shaping land use and management decisions. Specifically, actors are undertaking a diverse suite of land-based “climate actions.” These include clean energy production to replace fossil fuels (e.g., wind, solar, hydro, bioenergy + carbon capture and storage), ecosystem carbon flux alterations in natural systems (e.g., afforestation, reforestation, reduced deforestation, fire management, peatland restoration) and agricultural systems (e.g., optimized N fertilizer application to croplands, reduced cropland tillage, alternate wetting-drying of rice paddies), and forest management to manage fire risk under climate change. Substantial literature is developing around the co-benefits and trade-offs between such climate actions and other sustainable development objectives (e.g., produce enough food to feed a growing population). Yet major gaps in our understanding of interactions between different land-based climate mitigation and adaptation measures remain. Thus, in this session, we welcome research that aims to evaluate how different land-based climate actions interact with (e.g., compete with or complement) each other across space and time. In the process of addressing this aim, we will tackle questions such as: Where is climate action on land currently happening or planned for the future? How will diverse climate actions perform under a changing climate? What are the equity and justice implications of different climate actions? This session is meant to complement the Interactive, Immersive, or Innovative Session named Climate Action on Land: World Café.

Organizer(s): Gillian Galford, Marcia Macedo, Stephanie Spera, Brendan Fisher

South America’s Cerrado biome is a socio-ecological treasure at risk. Spanning 2 million km², this tropical savanna ecosystem supports 5% of the world’s biodiversity and a rich array of traditional livelihoods - from Quilombola communities to subsistence use by Indigenous Peoples and other traditional communities who have occupied the land for generations. Today, this biodiversity hotspot is also a hotspot of change due to growing pressures for agricultural development, conflicts over land and water, and afforestation projects anticipating global demand for carbon offsets.

Like most tropical savannas, the Cerrado lacks the international attention and legal protections afforded to neighboring forests. There is growing evidence that efforts to protect carbon-rich Amazon forests have inadvertently accelerated land clearing in the Cerrado, triggering rapid land-use changes that replaced over 50% of the native vegetation with croplands and pastures. Such indirect land-use changes are fueled by invisible processes, including a global bias towards forests and a hyper-focus on carbon as the main currency for establishing ecological value. Nevertheless, the drivers underlying hot spots and hot moments of Cerrado land-use change are poorly understood and merit further examination.

This session will convene global experts to discuss drivers and long-term impacts of change in the Cerrado, including complex teleconnections to global markets, local socioeconomic conditions and decision-making, and the historical context underpinning today’s conservation policies. We welcome contributions exploring how land-use dynamics vary across scale, as well as the implications of these changes for local livelihoods and future climate risk. Through a careful examination of the past and current dynamics in the Cerrado, this session of research presentations aims to enhance understanding and identify pathways for building socio-ecological resilience in the face of ongoing land use and climate changes.

Organizer(s): Ram Avtar, Yan Gao, Teiji Watanabe

Tropical forests hold most of the world’s biodiversity and various efforts have been made to curb deforestation and biodiversity loss. These efforts mainly focus on monitoring forest cover and carbon dynamics at local to global scale with the use of fine resolution to coarse resolution satellite data. The UN-Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) initiative, which aims to conserve carbon storage of tropical forests while safeguarding biodiversity also needs real-time information about change in forest cover. With the advancement of geospatial techniques, the quantification of the terrestrial ecosystem and their role in climate change mitigation has been widely studied. Deforestation and forest degradation contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Different from deforestation, which has established remote sensing data and methods for its monitoring, forest degradation monitoring is still challenging, especially with remote sensing. Recent conservation efforts have seen the result of forest recovery and enhancement, and yet monitoring forest recovery is also challenging on a larger scale. To increase forest cover and counteract climate change effects, forest plantation has been adopted by some countries as a strategy. Compared with naturally regenerated forest, forest plantation has less biodiversity and limited capacity to provide ecosystem services. To assess the effect of reforestation and forest regeneration in mitigating climate change, multi-spatiotemporal data and improved mapping methods such as machine learning play a major role. It also demonstrates the effects of climate variability on forests and biodiversity and how stable forests respond to climate variability. The goal of this session is to invite papers that are able to (1) explore the role of geospatial techniques to quantify terrestrial ecosystems in climate change mitigation, (2) apply innovative multi-sensor approaches to analyze land use/land cover change, deforestation, and forest degradation, and (3) integrate remote sensing and ground-based observation to improve terrestrial ecosystem monitoring.

Organizer(s): Julieta Carilla, Luis Daniel Llambí, María Piquer-Rodríguez

Mountain socio-ecological systems are very distinctive in biophysical and social characteristics. Land use, for example, is characterized by little mechanized agriculture, expanding recreational and conservation uses, and specific types of urbanization. Provision and regulation of water for both highland and lowland populations, high biodiversity and endemism, and elevation-dependent climate change add to the complexities and particular needs for research and monitoring, which must include an integrated and interdisciplinary perspective. The Andean Network of Socio-ecological Observatories (ROSA), a collaborative initiative started in 2023, seeks to integrate long-term monitoring efforts to identify, characterize, and quantify processes that influence the dynamics of mountain socio-ecosystems. ROSA aims to gather, systematize, and integrate existing monitoring efforts, facilitate efficient sharing of monitoring, management experiences, and conceptual approaches, and connect the knowledge derived from integrated monitoring to decision-making processes and the sustainable management of Andean SES. The objectives of this session are: 1) to share experiences of integrating biophysical and social monitoring systems into land systems observatories in mountains; 2) To understand reasons for success and failure of integrated monitoring systems in other regions of the world; and 3) to discuss a common agenda for the co-design of monitoring strategies and integration of knowledge between key stakeholders ( academia, decision-makers, civil society). For this, we propose a research presentation session including the following topics: 1) Description, creation and current status of the ROSA initiative, 2) Advances in key ROSA’s nodal observatories, 3) Participatory monitoring: place-based socioecological and transdisciplinary research. Experiences and insights from Latin America; 4) Synthesis of mountain social-ecological systems monitoring in Asia, Africa, and Europe; insights on infrastructure, data sharing, capacities, and governance, 5) open for public invitation. Based on the presentations and discussion we will produce a policy brief of good/successful practices for the integration of socio-ecological monitoring with land system observatories in mountains.

Organizers: Garik Gutman (NASA HQ), Krishna Vadrevu (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, USA) and Chris Justice (University of Maryland College Park, USA)

Land-use/cover changes (LUCC) encompass shifts in both physical land-cover types (e.g., forests, grasslands, urban areas) and the human activities that shape them (e.g., agriculture, urbanization, deforestation). These changes result from a complex interplay of socio-economic, environmental, and political factors. Understanding LUCC is crucial for assessing environmental impacts, managing natural resources sustainably, and addressing challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and food security. Latin American countries are undergoing rapid LUCC due to demographic and policy changes and economic development. Using remote sensing and geospatial technologies, researchers can monitor and analyze LUCC over time. Socio-economic analysis can provide an understanding of the land use processes. Together such analyses can provide valuable insights to inform decision-making and effective land-management strategies. This session will focus on actionable science specific to LUCC in Latin American countries. Actionable science involves conducting research that not only advances scientific knowledge but also suggests practical solutions and recommendations for policymakers, land managers, and communities to address LUCC issues. The session invites papers that focus on:

- Interdisciplinary approaches that integrate remote sensing and geospatial technologies to monitor land cover changes and incorporate socio economic analyses to understand the complex drivers and impacts of LUCC and facilitate the development of holistic solutions.

- Addressing policy relevant LUCC questions in collaboration with stakeholders, to quantify pressing policy and management challenges. Focus on identifying practical interventions and policy options that could effectively mitigate negative impacts or promote sustainable land management practices.

- Utilizing spatially explicit analysis techniques, including remote sensing, GIS, and spatial modeling, to map and monitor LUCC at various scales, mainly to enable the identification of hotspots, trends, and drivers of change, informing targeted interventions and decision making.

Employing scenario planning and forecasting methods to assess the potential future trajectories of LUCC under different socio-economic, environmental, and policy scenarios.

- Approaches that focus on monitoring and evaluating frameworks using remote sensing to assess the effectiveness of LUCC interventions and track progress towards desired outcomes for sustainable land use.

Overall, the session will focus on the use of remote sensing and geospatial technology studies that can generate actionable insights, contributing to more informed decision making, sustainable land management practices, and resilient communities in the face of environmental change. This research session directly contributes to the NASA LCLUC Program goals and objectives and the GLP Program. For more information about these Programs, please visit https://lcluc.umd.edu and https://glp.earth.

Organizer(s): Elsa Ordway, Ary Sanchez-Amaya, Isaac Aguilar, Nicholas Russo, Hannah Stouter

The tropics are experiencing dramatic changes as a result of climate and land-use change. Tropical forests will respond with shifts in carbon flux dynamics, water cycling, and species composition, resulting in feedback with globally important consequences for the people who depend upon them. However, the generalizability of different tropical forest responses remains highly uncertain. In addition, community engagement in tropical forest research is critical for positioning communities from the tropics to inform, participate in, and benefit from research about the region. Community engagement also has the potential to support the training of the next generation of scientists from the tropics. Ensuring that community engagement is equitable demands thoughtful research practices. We invite you to participate in an interactive session to learn about a recent effort to scope one of two possible options for NASA's next Terrestrial Field Ecology Campaign and discuss community engagement best practices. This session will comprise two sections: 1) The co-organizers will report on a white paper that outlines a multidisciplinary effort to address knowledge gaps in tropical forest regions’ responses to climate change that centers capacity building and equitable engagement with international collaborators. 2) We will facilitate space for the GLP community to express their needs and interests related to tropical forest research and develop action items based on these needs-with an emphasis on community members and researchers from the tropics. A structured roundtable discussion and breakout groups will address: Similarities and differences across tropical regions in forest structure, function, biodiversity, biogeochemical cycling, social-ecological systems, and disturbance processes, understanding of the vulnerability and resilience of tropical forest ecosystems to global change, the scientific and regionally specific basis for informed decision-making to guide societal responses to climate change mitigation and adaptation and biodiversity conservation, practices for fair and just community engagement and equitable collaborations, and existing barriers.

Organizer(s): Krishna Vadrevu (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, USA), Garik Gutman (NASA HQ), and Chris Justice (University of Maryland College Park, USA)

This session will focus on addressing the gap between research findings and policy implementation in the context of land-use/cover change (LUCC) studies in Latin America. LUCC presents a dynamic landscape shaped by diverse socio-economic, environmental, and political forces. The region is experiencing rapid transformation, with significant shifts in land-cover types driven by urbanization, agricultural expansion, deforestation, and natural resource extraction. These changes have profound implications for biodiversity, ecosystem services, climate resilience, and socio-economic development. Understanding the drivers, patterns, and impacts of LUCC in Latin America is essential for informed decision-making, sustainable land management, and addressing pressing environmental challenges. Although several national and international funding agencies have sponsored multiple projects over the region, there is a gap between research findings and informing policy, with many studies failing to translate scientific knowledge into actionable recommendations. Bridging this gap requires stronger communication between researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. This session will explore strategies for translating scientific knowledge into actionable recommendations and fostering improved communication between researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. The session aims to facilitate discussion on the challenges, opportunities, and best practices for bridging this gap to promote more effective and sustainable land-management practices in the region. Some of the questions specific to LUCC and to be addressed include:

- How can researchers effectively communicate their findings to policymakers and practitioners in a way that promotes understanding and informs decision-making processes?

- What are the key barriers preventing the translation of scientific knowledge into actionable recommendations, and how can these barriers be overcome?

- What role can interdisciplinary collaboration play in bridging the gap between research and policy?

What are some successful examples of research that has led to the development and implementation of evidence-based policies and interventions?

- What mechanisms exist for fostering ongoing dialogue between researchers, policymakers, and practitioners beyond the duration of specific research projects?

This research session directly contributes to the NASA LCLUC Program goals and objectives and the GLP. For more information about these Programs, please visit https://lcluc.umd.edu and https://glp.earth

Organizer(s): Iván A. Ortiz-Rodríguez

In a world increasingly impacted by climate change and human activities, comprehending and simulating Land Use Land Cover Change (LULCC) is vital for promoting sustainable development and effective environmental management. This training session, intended for a diverse audience, explores the use of Machine Learning (ML) techniques to improve the precision and effectiveness of LULCC modelling. It places a special emphasis on the Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC) algorithm (Zhu & Woodcock, 2014) and the incorporation of reliable training data, while integrating the powerful capabilities of Google Earth Engine for data processing and analysis.The session begins by establishing a worldwide framework. It addresses the present difficulties and patterns in Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) and its significant consequences for ecosystems, biodiversity, and climate. An introduction to the fundamental principles of Machine Learning (ML) and its growing significance in examining environmental data builds the foundation for more advanced discussions. Following that, we will move on to a thorough analysis of the CCDC method, an advanced technique employed for the continuous monitoring of changes in land cover. Participants will get information about the functioning of CCDC and its connection with ML models for research on LULC. The quality and preparation of training data are crucial factors in ML models for LULCC. This workshop will discuss techniques for gathering, analysing, and utilising training data to enhance the model's effectiveness. Participants will actively participate in hands-on exercises, utilising CCDC with training data from real-world case studies, processed through Google Earth Engine. This interactive workshop is designed for scientists, practitioners, or students specialising in environmental sciences, geography, or data science. Prior acquaintance with the fundamental principles of geospatial data management is advantageous but not obligatory. After this session, participants will gain the theoretical understanding and practical abilities to utilise ML in LULCC modelling.

Theme 2: Imagining the Future(s)

Organizer(s): Santiago Izquierdo-Tort, Sophie Veronique Avila Foucat

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programmes have mushroomed worldwide over the last two decades as key economic instruments for natural resources governance, including forest conservation. This session aims to delve into the diverse global experiences so far and future prospects of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programmes across various countries and settings. Reflecting the meeting's focus on envisioning sustainable land futures, the session will explore the key processes, drivers, and future implications of distinct trajectories of PES implementation. By examining settings where PES have proven to be successful but have otherwise faced implementation challenges over the long-term, we aim to uncover the intricacies of funding limitations, fluctuating political landscapes, and other factors that are hindering continued deployment. We will also explore cases where sustained PES implementation has been achieved, highlighting drivers such as innovative financial strategies and policy frameworks that have ensured continuity and effectiveness. Finally, the session will highlight regions that are just beginning to implement PES, thus providing insights into the early challenges and potential pathways for these nascent initiatives. In line with the meeting's emphasis on forecasting land system futures, this session will discuss how varying PES trajectories influence the transformation of landscapes and communities. We will address critical questions such as: What land system futures are unfolding due to diverse PES practices? What are the driving forces behind these evolving scenarios, and which trajectories are most likely to dominate? Additionally, we will explore how visions for land systems and PES vary among different communities and stakeholders, acknowledging the importance of inclusive and diverse perspectives in shaping sustainable futures. We hope to shed light on the complex dynamics governing PES long-term trajectories, thus enriching the conversation on PES’ scope for achieving significant gains in land management and conservation in an era of unprecedented environmental challenges.

Organizer(s): James Millington, Calum Brown, Derek Robinson

Advances in the behavioural sciences and simulation modelling have stimulated growth in the use of alternatives to econometric and equilibrium-based models for investigating and understanding sustainable land system futures. These behavioural land systems models provide rich representations of human behaviour and institutional processes that enable us to imagine and evaluate possible alternative futures in diverse ways. Such alternative approaches include agent-based modelling, system dynamics models and Bayesian belief networks (among others) and allow exploration of adaptations of actors, feedback between actors and their environments, and impacts of specific policy decisions. Thus, behavioural models enable us to explore the constraints that behavioural, socio-economic, cultural and political realities place on achieving desired land-use policies, such as carbon dioxide removal and net-zero targets for climate change mitigation or habitat restoration and conservation for biodiversity. This session will bring together land system scientists to share and compare recent applications of behavioural models of land systems, including experiences of stakeholder engagement in the modelling process. Discussion will allow participants to explore directions for future advances and ongoing challenges to using and developing these tools. This discussion may include considering approaches to represent drivers of human behaviour (e.g. motivations or incentives, whether from social, market or regulatory sources), the importance of land manager and other stakeholder beliefs about how drivers will play out in future (i.e. anticipatory behaviour), and the effects of varying visions for land systems between communities and generations (e.g. farm succession). The session is linked to the BeModeLS GLP working group but welcomes participants from across the GLP community to explore the diversity of ways in which human behaviour can and needs to be represented in simulation models of land systems to imagine alternative futures, evaluate which futures are most likely to become prominent, and identify pathways to realizing desired outcomes.

Organizer(s): Christopher Wong

Models and scenarios are a key tool for the science-policy interface and disseminating scientific understanding of transition pathways to the wider public. To be impactful at enabling the necessary transformative change, models and scenarios should be coherent and explicit about their values and justice preferences. This is essential as biodiversity and land system research and policy exist at a nexus of political, economic and social debates over land and resource use and the allocation of the derived benefits. Our understanding of what just and value coherent pathways towards sustainability goals might look like from global to local scales, and which interventions are most socially acceptable and just, remain limited. New biodiversity & land use-relevant scenarios are emerging, including adaptations of the SSP/RCP scenario framework and scenarios generated through the new Nature Futures Framework, that foster new collaborations between various scientific communities. An increasing number of modelling tools are developed and applied to quantitatively assess these scenarios and support policy development. However, we require a greater understanding of the equity and justice assumptions and implications of this research. This session aims to feature new and ongoing scenario and model work for land use and biodiversity in various contexts from local to global scales with a focus on:

- Value-explicit scenarios designed to address equity and justice aspects of land use transformations towards positive futures for nature, climate and people,

- Modelling applications at multiple scales, designed to assess such scenarios or to support policy processes,

- Reflections on the role of values and justice in exploring various equity aspects in pathways towards achieving sustainability targets.

Our confirmed speakers will cover different aspects of how justice can be integrated into land use and biodiversity research including scenario design, Christopher Wong, IIASA, modelling and conservation planning, Camille Venier-Cambron, VU, and downscaling global targets, Larissa Nowak, SGN.

Organizer(s): Katharina Waha, Maria Backhouse

This session is intended to provide an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to share insights on the role of smallholder agriculture in future land and agricultural systems. Smallholders today have a critical role in local and global land and food systems, for local livelihoods and agrobiodiversity, and for climate mitigation and adaptation. Nevertheless, they face multiple challenges such as land and water grabs, vulnerability to environmental and socioeconomic shocks, and low capacity to influence national and international policies. We encourage quantitative, qualitative, or integrated approaches and methods, case studies as well as larger-scale studies. We welcome contributions that:

- Assess food sovereignty and food security in smallholder agriculture systems in different parts of the world, preferably so that we can compare across different locations.

- Present best practices and evidence of inclusive and just transformations towards improved livelihoods, land and water access, and political participation.

- Explore the significance of land rights and property regimes for just transformations. Identify drivers of smallholder’s transformations and progress ideally where conclusions can potentially be upscaled and applied elsewhere.

- Study changes in numbers of smallholders in a local, regional, or global context together with the associated challenges of data collection and analysis and terminology. Investigate the impacts of market-based solutions to climate change (e.g. carbon trading) and biodiversity (e.g. payments for ecosystem services) on smallholders in different parts of the world

- Discuss the relevance of climate-land interactions specific to smallholder agriculture, for example, impacts of climate change and variability for smallholder agriculture and the role of smallholder agriculture in climate mitigation.

- Focus on a political, economic, social, or biophysical element of smallholder agriculture that has changed in the past or is expected to change in the future with relevance to the way we imagine future land systems.

Organizer(s): Felix Krawczyk, Benjamin Stuch, Rüdiger Schaldach

We kindly invite researchers and practitioners to submit abstracts that explore alternative and transformative land use futures. These futures may help stakeholders to address regional needs in the face of multiple social-ecological crises. The conception of stakeholders on potential future developments is embedded in systems of power, as they shape what is considered rational and achievable. In this regard, prevailing power systems may constrain transformative processes in social-ecological systems. To overcome this constraint, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary participatory stakeholder engagement is suggested, which expands the space of possible futures rather than constraining it. Grassroots approaches, in particular, can represent embryonic forms of a different society, as they typically challenge the impression that there are no alternatives by prefiguring concrete utopias on a local scale. Furthermore, since their knowledge and visions are rooted in daily experiences, they are aware of the local and regional aspects which may constrain or trigger transformative processes in social-ecological systems and land use systems in particular. Participatory scenario building may enable the modeling and further research on the causal-consequences of those transformative approaches. Therefore, we welcome a diverse range of perspectives and insights that contribute to the exploration of alternative land use futures and the participatory modeling of land use systems. Examples for Research Questions and Topics are:

- Integrated land use modeling: How to develop modelling approaches for strong integration of local stakeholder demands and visions in land use change simulations?

- In which way do power relations shape the futures depicted in land use scenarios and their contributions to imaginations of the future?

- Discuss normative approaches that seek to strengthen specific alternatives and their impact on land use modeling. How can normative approaches enable land use transformations?

Organizer(s): John Lynch, Aline Soterroni

There are considerable and increasing pressures on ecosystems globally. We must maintain and increase the capacity of nature to provide ecosystem services, from food provision and climate regulation to livelihoods and recreation, while minimising our environmental footprint and reversing the decline in biodiversity. Furthermore, there are expectations for transformational land-use change to help meet wider biodiversity and climate goals in tandem. Yet there are also criticisms that current scenario modelling is too narrow. For example, net-zero pathways that solely focus on climate solutions in isolation from their biodiversity impacts or national contexts often lead to significant amounts of land dedicated to monoculture afforestation or bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). These actions are not nature-based solutions and can lead to detrimental environmental or social impacts. In this session, we will explore some of the conceptual and practical tools that can enable more holistic evaluation, addressing multiple sustainability criteria, and highlight case-studies of multi-criteria assessment methods that can contribute to achieving and monitoring genuinely sustainable land-use. We will highlight recent developments in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and scenario modelling, including Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), that are improving our ability to anticipate and evaluate the impacts of land use and management across a more comprehensive range of environmental, climate and social concerns. We will also discuss the need for more holistic assessments in policy design. Case-studies will highlight multiple, potentially competing, roles of land-use in national / sub-national policy commitments in different regions. Finally, we also invite studies that can demonstrate how theoretical advances in impact assessment can help address these concerns and aid policy design, from global-level (e.g. meeting international environmental commitments) to smaller scales (e.g. regional governance and project-level assessment).

Organizer(s): María Perevochtchikova, Andrea Muñoz Barriga, Ricardo Castro, Luisa Delgado, Gloria Yaneth Florez Yepes, Víctor H. Marín

Peri-urban spaces offer various ecosystem services (ES) related to the ecosystem's functioning (e.g., provision, regulation, support, and cultural ES). However, the use and exploitation of these spaces are influenced by the decisions made by social actors at various organizational levels. These dynamics of change expand to various spatial and temporal scales, even in broad rural-urban gradients. Therefore, it is important to consider peri-urban territories as socio-ecological systems (SES) that are complex, evolving, and adaptive. These territories change over time and space under the influence of various actors and internal and external pressure factors. To study them effectively, an inter and transdisciplinary SES approach is essential. This approach integrates the views from social and ecological sciences to describe, analyze, and study the complexities that arise in these territories. By doing so, we can contribute to understanding current and past socio-ecological problems and reflect on future sustainability, particularly in relation to ES. To achieve this, we propose bringing together interventions that narrate various research experiences developed in Latin American countries under the inter and transdisciplinary perspective. This idea reinforces the argument that an integrated vision is needed to understand the complexity of these territories, articulating views from different disciplines and collaborating with other sectors of society and knowledge. It is also crucial to understand the thematic diversity of these territories, such as cultural tourism, ecotourism, agroforestry systems, green infrastructure, etc., analytically, theoretically, and methodologically for its study. Furthermore, we must strengthen international and inter-institutional collaboration networks to achieve this. This session aims to reflect on ways to achieve sustainability or its multiple forms in peri-urban territories by understanding ES and their socio-ecological dynamics.

Organizer(s): Jana Zscheischler, Isabelle Providoli, Maria Busse, Maria Garcia-Martin, Narcisa Pricope

Questions of how to transform towards sustainable and just land use systems are characterised by a high degree of complexity, uncertainties, different interests, values and conflicts. In order to address these sustainability challenges in an appropriate manner, integrative approaches are needed that link the plurality of different types of knowledge and perspectives. Against this background, transdisciplinary and transformative research approaches (e.g. in the form of living/real world labs) have become central to sustainability and land use sciences. The inherent processes of co-production and co-design have been proposed not only as a mechanism to come to an improved system understanding by jointly defining problems and common goals with diverse actors from science and practice. By fostering mutual learning and negotiation processes for reimagining alternative futures and collaboratively identifying most promising transformation pathways, they also enable the co-design of just and socially acceptable solutions. However, the processes of co-production of land use systems continue to be challenging and multifaceted, and there is great interest in further developing and refining them methodologically and conceptually. The aim of this session is to advance the understanding and critical reflection of how co-production approaches can be implemented and contribute to tackle multiple claims on land by diverse stakeholders in a multi-scale, cross-scale or tele-coupled context. A particular focus will be on the embedding of co-production processes in research designs and different settings, innovative methods of co-production and co-design, and the various roles and responsibilities of actors and their knowledge. We invite contributions from different geographical regions to present and learn from the diversity of co-production and co-design approaches of land systems. This session is organized by the GLP Working Group ‘Co-Production of Sustainable Land Systems“.

Organizer(s): Aline Mosnier, Fernando Orduna Cabrera

This session invites participants to play a mini-scenathon to explore the complex challenges surrounding food and land systems. A Scenathon (“scenario marathon”) is a multi-country, multi objectives, participatory experiment developed by the FABLE Consortium. Using the FABLE Calculator - an Excel-based model with a flexible scenario design interface, participants will embark on an immersive journey to reconcile countries’ priorities with global sustainability. Groups of 3 to 4 participants will be formed to play a country. Participants will step into the shoes of representatives from the Ministries of Agriculture, Environment and Health. After an introduction including a quiz to get familiar with the FABLE Calculator, participants will review the national targets of their country and the global sustainability goals that all countries need to achieve collectively at the horizon 2030 and 2050. Then, they will test the different levers of the tool, design their own scenarios, and try to identify the best combination of levers to achieve both national targets and global sustainability and limit trade-offs. Groups will reconvene to collectively observe progress toward global sustainability targets once the new national pathways are aggregated to the global level. The contribution of each country to meet the global climate mitigation target will be compared to what would be fair using different concepts of fairness. Participants will be invited to share reflections on how to bridge the gap with the global sustainability targets based on the results of the fairness assessment and their country’s constraints. Can they increase their effort on represented levers of change? Can they rely on technologies not yet represented in the tool? Which other shifts — economic, institutional, behavioral—are required? This hands-on session will offer participants new perspectives on potential solutions and difficulties to act collectively to meet the global sustainability targets related to food and land systems.

Roundtable discussion with stakeholders from the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force Mexican Member States

Organizer(s): William Boyd, Marius von Essen

The climate governance landscape after the Paris Agreement has become more polycentric and sub-national governments and initiatives play an increasingly important role in implementing the international climate policy agenda. The jurisdictional scale in particular has been suggested as a potential sweet spot that is ‘small’ enough for solutions to be adapted to local biophysical and socio-political realities, while being ‘large’ enough to achieve outcomes at scale to contribute to system-wide transformations. Many sub-national governments that are pioneering jurisdictional approaches, such as Mato Grosso in Brazil or East Kalimantan in Indonesia are members of the Governors for Climate and Forests (GCF) Task Force. The GCF Task Force was founded in 2008 by a group of ten governors from Brazil, Indonesia, and the United States to address climate change, deforestation, and sustainable development. Today, the 43 member states and provinces cover almost half of the World’s tropical forest and are important drivers for sustainable transformations in their regions. The goal of the GCF Task Force is to harness and support the political leadership of committed Governors in the fight against climate change and deforestation, while empowering civil servants and civil society partners who are critical to building and maintaining successful jurisdictional programs. In this interactive session, we will convene stakeholders from jurisdictional initiatives in Oaxaca and the other Mexican member states of the GCF, including politicians, civil servants, indigenous peoples, and civil society organizations to consider the following questions: How can jurisdictional approaches reconcile the diverging interests and objectives of multiple stakeholder groups? What are the challenges for ensuring the longevity of jurisdictional approaches? What role can academia play in designing, implementing, and learning from jurisdictional approaches to land system governance?

Organizer(s): Morgan Rogers, V. Kelly Turner, Ramit Debnath

Facing the increasing complexities brought on by rapid urbanization, socio-economic disparities, climate change, and declining biodiversity, it is crucial to leverage land systems science frameworks and methodologies in the development of resilient urban land systems. A deep understanding of urban land dynamics is essential, as it provides the foundation for informing and guiding local policy and planning decisions towards creating more resilient urban futures. In this interactive session, our goal is to delve into how land system science can shape local planning strategies towards achieving more resilient urban futures, while identifying potential research avenues that could advance these efforts. We will begin with a series of short presentations by researchers and practitioners in the field, setting the stage for an in-depth exploration of the theme. Following the presentations, we will transition into a World Café format, where each presenter will lead a discussion centered around a specific key question within the session's theme. Participants are encouraged to choose the topic that resonates most with their interests, fostering deeper engagement and idea exchange. After these focused discussions, we will reconvene as a larger group to share and explore the various research directions identified by each subgroup. This format encourages sharing of diverse perspectives and collaborative thinking, fostering a multi-dimensional understanding of the challenges and opportunities in integrating land systems science theories and methodologies into local planning for resilient urban futures. Potential questions to guide our discussions could include: How can we achieve inclusive and equitable urban development via land systems science frameworks? How might land system science theories aid in comprehending land-use dynamics at scales relevant to local planning institutions? How can land systems science inform the creation of policy frameworks that support sustainable urban development?

Theme 3: Enabling Transformative Change

Organizer(s): Samuel Levy, Leah Samberg

Non-forest natural ecosystems, which include grasslands, savannas, shrublands, and wetlands are vital to maintaining biodiversity, terrestrial carbon stocks, and traditional ways of life across the globe. Despite their importance, protections for these ecosystems are far weaker than for forested ecosystems. Non-forest natural ecosystems receive less funding, have lower coverage by protected areas, and are less well mapped than their forested counterparts. Likely as a result, large-scale land use change is increasing in many non-forest ecosystems, in many cases driven by expansion of large-scale agricultural commodity production. Multi-national commodity companies are increasingly expanding their no deforestation commitments to include provisions requiring no conversion of any natural ecosystems to achieve targets regarding emissions reductions and biodiversity conservation. Resultantly, there is an urgent need for better data to enable these corporations to monitor and implement their no conversion commitments. Improved understanding of the drivers and hotspots of non-forest natural ecosystem conversion is critical to assess the state and trajectories of these vitally important land systems and to enable transformative change and protect non-forest ecosystems’ carbon stocks and biodiversity. In this session we aim to bring together novel research into these issues and to foster discussion that can cut across the diversity of non-natural forest ecosystems and the public and private policies that exist to govern them. Potential topics and methodological approaches include but are not limited to: global or regional mapping of non-forest natural ecosystems and their conversion; assessments of the impacts of natural ecosystem conversion, including carbon emissions, biodiversity losses, and livelihood impacts; comparative case studies of land use frontiers dynamics in non-forest natural ecosystems; assessments of the effectiveness of public or private land use policies at reducing non-forest natural ecosystem conversion. We encourage research from tropical and non-tropical regions, as well as research that is qualitative or quantitative in methodology.

Organizer(s): Laila Berning, Andrea Pacheco Figueroa

Forest risk-commodity (FRC) policies can be evaluated by political science, economics, and forecast modeling. In this session, we bring together these different disciplines to holistically explain the development, design, implementation, enforcement, and impacts of key FRC policies in the forest and agricultural sector across the demand-side (e.g., European Union Timber Regulation, Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade Regulation & Voluntary Partnership Agreements, EU Regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR), private certification) and supply-side (e.g., Brazil’s Forest Code, Amazon soy moratorium). In this cross-disciplinary session, we aim to discuss why many policy evaluations find that FRC policies have limited-to-no effectiveness in achieving explicitly stated policy goals (e.g., zero deforestation). We seek to explore whether such evaluations may misunderstand or miss key aspects of the policy design, such as secondary policy goals. This interdisciplinary session combines three key interrelated analytical perspectives focusing on:

- Policy design: explaining why and how FRC policies and governance mechanisms are created, designed, adopted, implemented, and enforced by drawing on regulatory policy change theories and empirical qualitative data collection and analyses (e.g., interviews, policy document analyses).

- Policy evaluation: showcasing ex-post impact evaluations of mandatory due diligence policies that help us understand on-the-ground impacts and effectiveness of FRC policies and governance mechanisms (e.g., reduced deforestation, leakage).

- Expected policy contribution towards long-term goals: demonstrating how ex-ante modeling can help bridge agenda setting (through long-term pathways) and policy design for international supply chain regulations, drawing on qualitative (e.g., EUDR-related impact narratives and discourses) and quantitative data and analysis (e.g., econometric estimates of potential leakage effects).

We aim to bring these three perspectives together in our final discussion. Hence, we welcome other presentations on any of the above three topics, but particularly those showing examples of supply-side policy evaluations not yet represented by our confirmed speakers (e.g., from Indonesia).

Organizer(s): Julie Gwendolin Zaehringer, Armando Valdés-Velásquez, Pablo Negret, Gabriela Wiederkehr-Guerra, Svitlana Lavrenciuc,

This session explores the under-examined yet crucial role of buffer zones around protected areas worldwide, shedding light on their potential for sustainable land use, biodiversity conservation, and enhanced human livelihoods. As they are meant to buffer against threats to ecosystems meant to be protected in the core zone, they are frontier landscapes of critical importance. Despite their prevalence, evaluation of these zones in terms of their impacts and potentials have not received sufficient attention in the conservation science discourse. Currently, challenges arise from overlapping land access rights and undefined responsibilities for buffer zone management, raising questions about inclusivity and effectiveness. Land users living in buffer zones need to be empowered to become stewards of these zones. Furthermore, optimal combinations and spatial configuration of diverse land uses to enhance synergies in multifunctional landscapes need to be found. Buffer zones represent an untapped arena for experimenting with transformative relationships between nature and people. This session delves into approaches for managing buffer zones in tropical forest landscapes of Peru, Madagascar, Laos, and beyond and explores avenues to enhance inclusivity and management efficacy. Crucially, it examines transformative land use interventions within these zones, aiming to unlock their potential as social-ecological living labs. The envisioned transformation involves establishing a mutually beneficial coexistence between nature and communities, addressing both ecological and human needs. Furthermore, the session explores the collaborative management of buffer zones, emphasizing their limited spatial extent as an advantage for fostering partnerships among diverse stakeholders. A collaborative approach not only consolidates sustainability transformations but also positions buffer zones as models for development, offering insights applicable to other regions. Moreover, effective collaboration around buffer zones holds promise for reducing territorial conflicts around protected areas. Through examining buffer zones as social-ecological land systems, the session contributes to the broader dialogue on conservation and sustainable development.

Organizer(s): Thomas Addoah, Joss Lyons-White

The expansion of agricultural commodity production poses a severe threat to global ecosystems, driving deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and biodiversity loss. Private companies involved in the production and trade of agricultural commodities play a key role in addressing the challenges associated with them. Consequently, there is an urgent need to exert pressure on these stakeholders to develop policies and initiatives that can achieve structural and behavioural changes towards sustainable land use practices. While these companies in recent years have responded with a range of supply chain policies and initiatives, their impacts on achieving the behavioural and structural changes needed to transform the agriculture sector remains limited due to inadequate consideration of equity in the design and implementation of the initiatives, particularly in commodities involving smallholder production. With a growing global attention on the role of the private sector in producing transformations at scale, this session seeks to examine the design and implementation pathways of private sector initiatives within forest-risk commodity sectors. By delving into issues of equity, supply chain arrangements, and public sector involvement, we will examine: Under what conditions do private sector initiatives improve conservation and livelihood outcomes? What pathways (political, policy, institutional, etc) are necessary for achieving structural and behavioural transformative changes in the land use sector and what role can the private sector play in that, if any? The discussion will also explore the role of local communities, government, and distant consumers in reshaping the agriculture landscape. Through interdisciplinary perspectives, the session aims to provide insights into the challenges and opportunities associated with private initiatives, from their design through implementation, fostering a deeper understanding of how they can contribute to a sustainable and equitable future in land use practices.

Organizer(s): Rachel Carmenta, Julie Zähringer

Significant changes are urgently needed to preserve tropical forest landscapes where biocultural diversity remains high. Current conservation efforts often focus on in-situ site-level interventions that tend also to introduce ‘alternative’ livelihoods or income sources. The site-level focus and emphasis on the cash-poor risks perpetuating the misunderstanding that local poverty is the leading driver of biodiversity decline. Thinking that exonerates and under-emphasizes those (albeit distant) capitalized actors who are the greater conservation problem. This approach is ill-equipped to deliver either effective, or equitable conservation. We draw on recent proposals for Connected Conservation (Carmenta et al, 2023, Biol Cons) a conservation model that engages new tools to tackle distant wealth, in combination with on-the-ground conservation action to empower the knowledge, value systems, rights and cultural diversity of biodiversity stewards. Connected Conservation identifies, and works to diminish, three dominant flows from centers of wealth that disproportionately harm biodiversity. It works to enhance and amplify the three positive, yet presently marginalized flows that stem from biocultural centers. Ideally connected conservation sees actions operating in concert across scales (i.e. from biocultural centres to centres of wealth) to resolve key biodiversity challenges. This session draws on these ideas, bringing together experience of conservation action working to disrupt and diminish (in centres of wealth), with those that enhance and amplify (at the site-level). The session begins with an overview of the Connected Conservation model, before hearing from speakers that focus on actions at very different scales but each with a focus on mitigating two leading challenges: mega-fire and mining. We will consider the needs, opportunities and barriers to interweaving additional actions, and connecting them across scales. This will lead to a deepened understanding of how a Connected Conservation approach can bring about transformative change in conservation practices and generate effective and equitable conservation action.

Organizer(s): Vartika Singh, Mario Acosta Herrero

This session aims to delve into the critical nexus between transitioning to healthy diets and the implications for food and land sustainability, exploring perspectives from global to local scales. A key focus will be on presenting empirical research from countries such as India and Greece within the framework of the FABLE (Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land, and Energy) Consortium with a juxtaposition of global assessments from Food Systems and Global Change group at Cornell University. With case studies from countries, we will be offering a comprehensive view on the synergistic benefits of healthy diets for both human health and environmental sustainability.

Objectives:

- Exploring the evidence on transition to healthy diets and implications for Food and Land Sustainability: Discussion on how shifts towards healthy diets impact agricultural practices, land use, and overall sustainability, with a focus on reconciling environmental goals with food security and nutritional needs.Case Studies from India and Greece: Presentation of research findings from countries as part of the FABLE Consortium, highlighting the unique challenges and strategies employed in these diverse contexts.

- Global Perspectives on Diet and Sustainability: Review of global assessments on the benefits of healthy diets, considering both human health and environmental parameters, to provide a holistic understanding of the issue.

This session is designed for academics, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in the fields of environmental economics, sustainable agriculture, nutrition, and public health, as well as stakeholders in food system transformation. Participants will gain a nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between dietary choices and sustainability. The session will foster interdisciplinary dialogue, encourage the sharing of best practices and challenges, and potentially spur collaborative initiatives aimed at promoting sustainable, healthy diets globally and locally. Attendees can expect to gain insights into novel approaches, methodologies, and real-world applications that contribute to the advancement of SDGs.

Organizer(s): Britaldo Soares-Filho

Increasing demand for agricultural commodities is an important indirect and direct driver of deforestation in tropical countries. To this end, public and private interest has gradually emerged over the past two decades but has taken center stage only in the early 2020s. In particular, traceability has consolidated as a market requirement to eliminate deforestation from agricultural supply chains, and as such has become pivotal for regulating global trade. Growing pressure for deforestation-free agriculture products has led to agreements by large companies to exclude deforesters from their supply chains (e.g., cattle agreements, soy moratorium), commitments from China and the United States to ban imports linked to deforestation, and more importantly regulations recently adopted by the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) to enforce the import of deforestation-free products. The EU regulations require that companies trace the commodities back to their origin of production, at the same time proposing a benchmarking system to assign a level of deforestation risk to each sourcing country. In response to these ambitious regulations, private and public initiatives are increasingly seeking to develop solutions to trace origins of agricultural outputs and to identify whether they are linked to deforestation. In our session we will assess the legal, political, governance, and technical readiness for implementing the regulation standards and agreements, including monitoring systems already in place or proposed in both importing and producing countries. Although technical innovation is key to achieving thorough traceability, challenges also include the identification of indirect suppliers, handling of sensitive data used to check legal compliance, sales, and exports, and the need for avoiding costly private certification schemes through the development of public and transparent systems that ensure credibility as well as legitimacy built upon cross-country partnerships.

Organizer(s): Birgit Schmook, Alana Rader, Sofia Mardero Jimenez

Conservation-development interactions are intensifying in Latin America because of environmental and land-use changes (Zimmerer 2011). Historically, agricultural expansion in the region has been poorly regulated, resulting in the loss of high-biodiversity tropical ecosystems (Clark et al., 2012; Estrada-Carmona et al., 2014) alongside an inequitable accruement of economic benefits from deforestation that does little to alleviate poverty (Schatan 2002). In recognition of the current major challenges of increasing agricultural productivity, promoting rural development, and conserving natural resources during climate change, many governments have developed policies to simultaneously combat rural poverty and promote sustainable agriculture (Ayala-Ortíz 2008). In Mexico and other Latin American countries, rural development policy has been based on compensation programs through conditional cash transfers (CCTs) since the 1990s. The basic idea behind CCTs is to provide poor rural households with a minimum income to secure agricultural activities, children's education, and healthcare, among other things. For example, since 2019 the Mexican federal government has introduced "Sembrando Vida" as a flagship program to combat rural poverty and environmental degradation, promote food security, and mitigate climate change through the planting of one million hectares of fruit and timber trees in agroforestry systems. In Sembrando Vida, beneficiaries receive a monthly salary to maintain agroforestry plots, alongside plant provisioning from government -supervised nurseries, extensive extension services, and a structure for community learning. In this session, we aim to a) analyze how Sembrando Vida contributes to rural governance by simultaneously promoting smallholder agriculture and environmental protection; b) compare and contrast sustainable rural development approaches across Latin America; and c) discuss the most common trade-offs that arise from simultaneous support of environmental protection and household consumption and wellbeing.

Organizer(s): Adelina Chandra, Leonie Hodel

The relevance of gender in environmental and agricultural systems has long been recognized but has received limited research in land system science. In parts of theoretical studies, women are essentialized by portraying them as inherently more intertwined with nature than men, turning them into environmental heroines. On the other hand, they tend to be portrayed as passive victims of the patriarchal system. Such myths have later been relativized by materialist ecofeminist theories. Similar stereotypes can be observed in traditional communities and other minority groups whose livelihoods are directly linked to land resources. There is evidence that economically productive land use decisions are more often made by men. However, the resulting environmental and social impacts, for example, consequences of climate change, disproportionately affect women and minority groups. Women, in turn, tend to play a more central role in decisions that affect the well-being of the family and community and include aspects such as food supply, health, and care work. Moving away from exploitative and unsustainable land use practices is essential to address various climatic, environmental, and social issues. Promoting greater well-being and resilience requires a broader understanding of power imbalances, gender dynamics, and intersectionality and how these drive land dynamics and social outcomes. In this session, we will (i) gather evidence of the influence of gender on land use, (ii) conceptualize that influence, and (iii) elucidate what role it plays in fostering transitions towards more sustainable land systems. In highlighting the role of women in finding long-term and just transformations of land systems, we will open up the discussion for challenges and opportunities regarding gender, minority groups, and sustainability. We plan to allocate half of the time for presentations and the other half to discuss three general questions on research gaps, methods, and links between gender and transformative change.

Organizer(s): Aishwarya Levy Bhattacharjee, The Nature Conservancy, Siyu Qin, The Nature Conservancy, Paola Velasco-Herrejon, University of Oslo, University of Cambridge

The global energy system is shifting as nations urgently tackle climate change and strive to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7, ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy. Renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, has emerged as a pivotal solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and ensuring energy independence. However, its deployment often entails a significant land footprint, posing challenges to economic sustainability, social equity, and public support due to land use trade-offs. Poorly sited projects have the potential to create undue social pressures and threaten livelihoods that are highly dependent on the land.

In this session, we will delve into potential impacts on local communities and conflicts driven by the expansion of renewable energy, and explore strategies to proactively address them. Invited talks in this session will focus on:

1) Proactive planning in light of future land use change and social pressures associated with trade-offs;

2) Development of indicators for better spatial planning (e.g., using secondary data such as government census, peer-reviewed datasets, land use and land cover layers) to identify suitable sites while minimizing adverse impacts. These indicators can represent cultural, economic, or ecological connections between individuals or communities and the land and;

3) Characterizing social impacts on local communities via participatory approaches.

Recognizing that spatial planning alone may not fully address all community concerns, this theme emphasizes the importance of engaging local perspectives in the planning process.

The broader aim of the session is to inform decision-making for a responsible and equitable energy transition. We invite contributions that disseminate insights and promote discussion on proactive land management and integrative approaches to planning renewable energy. To this end, we encourage presentations that share findings, methodologies, or case studies on the assessment, planning and mitigation of land-energy system trade-offs.

Organizer(s): Manan Bhan, Pooja Choksi

The restoration of degraded ecosystems is expected to be one of the biggest land use transitions the world might see. Ambitious international pledges and national commitments, on the one hand, are evidence of its potential to achieve the ‘triple wins’ of fighting climate change, reversing biodiversity loss, and enhancing human wellbeing. On the other hand, restoration initiatives may fundamentally transform local land use regimes.

This interplay between the global and the local does not adequately take into account the worldviews and value systems being negotiated in local and national land use systems. How might such a land use transition play out at local and regional levels in dynamic tropical landscapes? What might be its intended and unintended socio-ecological outcomes? What sort of coalitions would determine these outcomes?

In this immersive session, participants will be asked to organize themselves in 2 or 3-person groups. Groups would be provided a persona of a key stakeholder group involved in, or affected by, ecosystem restoration initiatives, and asked to assume their roles. They will be asked to map their values and terms of engagement relative to other stakeholder groups through a value mapping exercise. They will also be encouraged to define their added value to restoration initiatives and the outcomes they visualize from their intervention on a gradient of its incremental, disruptive and evolutionary potential.

Groups will reconvene to exchange perspectives on these values and offerings in a debrief session. Through these discussions, participants will be able to visualize the key characteristics of each stakeholder group involved in ecosystem restoration, reflect on the groups where values and outcomes align the most, as well as the coalitions that may be required to bridge the gap where alignment may not be currently visible. Can values be relatively prioritized to achieve alignment? What would be the barriers for different groups with shared values to come together?

In this way, this session would be able to advance learnings on the broad value orientations of actors and how they play out in land use negotiations, the values that individuals/communities place on restoration that may come in conflict and the trade-offs that restoration practitioners encounter and ways to reconcile them towards a "triple win" scenario.

Organizer(s): Santiago Izquierdo-Tort, Meredith Martin, Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza, Laura Maria Arango Saavedra

Forest-based carbon offsets (FBCOs) are projects through which companies, governments or individuals voluntarily mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing “carbon offsets” produced through forest management practices. Significant FCBO expansion has been hailed by some as a means to incentivize and provide financial support for forest restoration and conservation. Concerns have been raised, however, over FCBO’s failure to meet purported environmental impacts and adverse social implications. A recent study claimed that 90% of projects in the tropics are not “offsetting” the amounts claimed. Additionally, studies have documented how FBCO implementation can contravent the rights, land use practices, and worldviews of Indigenous Communities, Tribes and First Nations (ICTFNs). Yet, a number of ICTFNs have also initiated or co-developed FBCO projects in their territories with positive impacts, including financial benefits, strengthening of organizational capacity, revitalization of land use practices, and increased access to and control of natural resources. As ICTFNs begin to engage more frequently with FBCO, there is a need to recognize and amplify the innovations generated by ICTFNs, and to provide opportunities for cross-learning and exchange among ICTFNs, researcher communities, and other relevant stakeholders on drivers of success and required safeguards to avoid risks. This session brings together the various stakeholders involved in a recently formed collaboration focused on the co-production of knowledge and practice in FBCO among indigenous communities in Oaxaca. This collaboration includes a multidisciplinary team of researchers and students from three countries -Mexico, the United States, and Canada-, the Integradora de Comunidades Indígenas y Campesinas de Oaxaca (ICICO) -an organisation formed, governed, and represented by twelve Indigenous Communities with long-term experience with FCBO-, and local community members. The roundtable discussion will focus on how the collaboration came into place, its main results to date, and the scope for such collaborations to enable transformative change for sustainability.

Organizer(s): Naia Ormaza Zulueta, Zia Mehrabi

Invited presenters include:

Prof David R. Boyd, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment

Prof Joyeeta Gupta, University of Amsterdam

Dr Laura Catrejon-Violante, University of British Columbia

Naia Ormaza-Zulueta, University of Colorado, Boulder

This session will explore the intersection of Human Rights and Environmental Health, from a legal and scientific standpoint, in light of the UN General Assembly's resolution recognising the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment in July 2022. We aim to bring together lawyers and scientists to improve our capacity to map, monitor and act on human environmental rights violations across the world.

We will begin our session with experts from both environmental law and science. We will ask lawyers what are the major gaps that scientists need to fill to support existing law and policy, and, the scientists, what are the major gaps they see in the existing law and policy environment in acting on scientific knowledge.

We will then work with attendees to discuss the ways that action on environmental injustices across different scales - global, regional, local, can be supported by the land system science community. We welcome input from experts on food security, water security, biodiversity, clean air, non-toxic environments, and safe climate to exchange views on the importance, kinds, and real-world uses of science for the realization of these rights. We will look at the practical and strategic applications for legal investigations, environmental justice advocacy, identifying gaps in present approaches, reviewing future technology, and brainstorming ideas for moving the field forward.

We expect participants to actively engage, provide fresh perspectives, and collaborate on novel pathways to merging law and science. Our objective is to develop a list of improvements in mapping and monitoring approaches and techniques, and potential research directions, where the role of the land system science community will be emphasized. These outcomes are expected to enhance our understanding of environmental human rights violations and their interaction with social dimensions, contributing to a more informed approach to these issues in line with the conference's theme of transformative changes.

We welcome one and all!

Organizer(s): Patrick Meyfroidt

Land system and sustainability challenges, related to food security, livelihoods, conservation, climate change mitigation and adaptation, energy transition, and relational values with land, are embedded within broader societal dynamics. Three contemporary societal dynamics interact and make sustainability challenges even more wicked, while also reflecting the failures of governments, societies, and science to develop just and effective solutions to these challenges. First, the rise of authoritarianism and populism makes it harder to achieve just and inclusive solutions, and to acknowledge and thus manage hard tradeoffs. Second, the crisis of rationality, knowledge and legitimacy of expertise makes it harder to use rationality and scientific knowledge as a part of the inputs needed in these debates, including the scholarly approaches that bridge multiple forms of knowledge. Third, algorithmic social media provides tools for spreading disinformation and anti-democratic discourses that generate "engagement", but also opportunities for social movements and citizens worldwide to exchange and organize around sustainability issues. Mediation by social networks and digital tools also modifies the experiential relation with nature. These dynamics have been analyzed but an explicit connection with land system issues remains lacking. The goal of this session is to open a discussion about interlinkages between these three dynamics and land use and land systems challenges: how they affect land systems, how land systems play a role in these three dynamics, and how to account for these when developing and implementing solutions to sustainability issues involving land systems. The session will feature short introductions (max. 3 x 5'), followed by a World Cafe session organized in two steps, where people will rotate across three tables to discuss first linkages between each individual dynamic and land systems, and then interlinkages between these three dynamics and land systems. The outcomes depend on the engagement and decisions of participants.

Organizer(s): Van Thi Hai Nguyen, Margaret Owuor, Peter Messerli, Julie Zähringer

The call for transformative governance in biodiversity conservation is growing. The shift in global biodiversity governance focuses on scrutinizing and facilitating more involvement of non-traditional actors and interactions between public and private entities in intergovernmental processes from bottom-up, rather than just legal regimes and state practices. The `whole society approach` is being globally adopted as central to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). According to the CBD Action Agenda Pledges for Nature and People, not just state members and international organizations, more and more sub-national authorities, businesses, indigenous people and local communities, and other middle-out actors such as NGOs and researchers are participating in intergovernmental processes and taking actions to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. The challenges include translating the approach into local practice, dealing with unintended consequences (such as green-washing or cross-sectoral leakages), reorganizing coexisting institutions at different levels, and fostering innovation in governance and policy solutions. We argue that a whole society approach can also be a "nobody" approach. To enable actors to work together, it is necessary to distribute 'governance capacity' among them in three domains: enabling rules of the game, converging discourses, and facilitating essential resources. This will enable actors to work in an environment of polycentricity, accountability, transparency, justice, equity, and sustainability. The session aims to outline the ongoing theoretical debates, conceptual innovation in biodiversity governance, as well as empirical evidence on how this approach is being adopted in different contexts, understanding the role of actors, especially non-state actors, their interaction within their social networks, and their agency in co-designing solutions. We invite experts from various disciplines and sectors to present research, share experiences, discuss policy implications, and discuss moving the GBF forward in practice. This will foster collaboration and knowledge sharing to build a coalition for change.

Organizer(s): O. Ravaka Andriamihaja, Gabriela Gonzales

In an era marked by rapid globalization, environmental transformations, and cultural shifts, there is a critical imperative to (re-)establish positive ways of relating to the environment that celebrate and safeguard territories and landscapes. This session aims to highlight transformative pathways towards this symbiosis of human activity and environment towards that draw on the invaluable contributions of Indigenous and local knowledge systems. Worldwide, Indigenous and local communities’ deep connections with knowledge about the natural world can play an important role in innovative solutions to today's global challenges. However, these insights often remain neglected due to their narrative form, which differs from the conventional communication of Western science and policy. In this interactive session, we propose to promote storytelling as a powerful tool to convey Indigenous and local knowledge, but also to serve as a bridge between different knowledge systems. We will invite Indigenous and local knowledge holders, researchers, and practitioners to embody the protagonists of tropical forest territories and landscapes from around the world in a role-play exercise. By embracing diverse narrative formats, such as images, drawings, videos, sounds, and songs, we aim to unlock the richness of Indigenous and local knowledge and delve into multifaceted stories of hope, resilience, and transformation. With this session, we ultimately aim to challenge mainstream communication paradigms and foster a space where different knowledge systems are celebrated as complementary drivers for territory and landscape transformation. We propose a storytelling session of maximum 15 minutes per storyteller, with questions and answers. The storytelling session emulates a traditional story with a beginning, a body and an end featuring authentic characters to illustrate a specific theme. We envisage a lively exchange of stories of hope, generating innovative lessons and recommendations for transformation of tropical forests, providing scientific input and practical implications for research, policy, and practice.

Organizer(s): Siyu Qin, Aishwarya Bhattacharjee

With global commitments to expand renewable energy and conservation areas, how can we better integrate local voices in regional and national spatial planning?

During this interactive session, we invite attendees to discuss best practices, major challenges, and possible ways forward to integrate social values (i.e., cultural, economic, and ecological indicators that represent connections and dependencies between people and the land) and relevant actors into mapping efforts for conservation and development planning.

The session will commence with two talks (30 min total) on integrating local knowledge and social considerations into predominately top-down designs of conservation and climate solutions.

The session continues into a dynamic "World Café" format (20 min) that focuses on existing practices, spatial planning tools, frameworks that are used to include and integrate into the social dimensions of land-use planning. Participants will break into groups to discuss the challenges in bringing local voices to planning across diverse scales and systems. Specifically, the discussions will be divided into subgroups on: (1) Knowledge and Methods - best practices and critical gaps, (2) Funding and Resources - sources, distribution, and obstacles, (3) Policy and Governance - existing institutional structures and barriers, within the context of integrating local voices into national and regional planning processes.

After the discussion, groups will report back (15 min), and then regroup to discuss (20 min) how to connect relevant solutions across the three topics to bring local voices/social values to national planning process such as the National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans.

The outcome of this session will be a document (e.g., perspective, report) of recommended tools, frameworks, datasets, and methods to integrate the social dimension into regional, national, and local planning processes, as well as recommendations of how to coordinate between sustainable development and socioecological conservation priorities within the evolving landscape.

Organizer(s): Victoria Junquera, Sara Constantino, Dilini Abeygunawardane

Markets play a central role in the use and governance of natural resources, yet our understanding of markets is limited. While there have been many attempts to model the “role of the market” in land system dynamics with various degrees of success, this very formulation highlights a shortcoming that this session aims to redress: rather than conceptualizing and reifying markets as entities with a life and laws of their own, this session aims to encourage the examination of the embedded nature of markets in all aspects of society, the emergence of markets in time and space as an active process facilitated by agents and institutions, and the co-evolution of markets and land systems - one such example is the joint and mutually reinforcing expansion of agricultural frontiers and local commodity markets. Understanding these dynamics is particularly important for the governance of social-ecological regime shifts and more generally for strategic efforts to transform society towards a more sustainable pathway. In this session, we invite researchers and practitioners with diverse backgrounds who are interested in topics such as 1) advancing the theoretical understanding of markets, thus problematizing conceptions of “The Market” as an exogenous force; 2) examining markets and land systems as embedded and co-evolving complex systems with properties such as emergence, multi-scale dynamics, or the occurrence of regime shifts; and 3) the implications for land system governance, for example identifying intervention windows or early warnings of tipping points. The session will include a 5-person panel from different disciplines to present “provocations” (short presentations) aimed at stimulating active conversation and seeding discussion among attendees. We will also create an interacting “living” document during this session. We hope the session could thus be a starting point for a (1) new epistemic community that will extend beyond this meeting and a (2) collaborative perspective piece.

Organizer(s): Kimberly Carlson, Matthew Hayek, Sonali McDermid, David Kanter, James Gerber, Paul West, Carole Dalin

How to manage the multiple roles of land in climate action - including mitigation and adaptation - is a central challenge facing humanity. Ideally, climate action will be both effective and equitable, minimizing trade-offs and maximizing co-benefits across a range of sustainable development objectives. Yet, there are major gaps in our understanding of climate actions. For example, the rising prevalence of climate extremes and rapidly changing environmental conditions may constrain realized land-based carbon sequestration, but remain largely unaccounted for in assessed potentials. The existence of possible synergies between carbon storage and certain food production systems and trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and climate mitigation are increasingly acknowledged but large biophysical and socioeconomic uncertainties remain. Additionally, developing large-area renewable energy projects or mining for minerals critical to the clean energy transition may incur socio-economic trade-offs that are unevenly distributed. The goal of this interactive session is to support development of a rigorous and comprehensive framework to evaluate multiple land-based climate action measures across dimensions of effectiveness, co-benefits, and trade-offs. To meet this goal, we will host a large-group dialogue in World Cafe format. After a welcome from session organizers, participants will discuss three questions in small group settings, moving to a new group for each question. At the end of the session, individuals will share insights from their conversations with the larger group. These insights will be recorded graphically and the graphic representation will be displayed for the remainder of the meeting (we hope!) in a public location for all to see. We warmly welcome all interested participants to join our session! This session is meant to complement the Research Presentation Session named Climate Action on Land: Research Presentations.

Organizer(s): Elisabeth Huber-Sannwald, Natalia Martínez Tagüeña, Víctor Manuel Reyes Gómez, Simone Lucatello, Juana Claudia Leyva Aguilera, Georges Seingier, Luis Carlos Bravo Peña, Salvador Narváez Torres, Sergio Armando Campos Villavicencio, Oscar Alberto Jimenez Orocio

Efforts to combat desertification and restore drylands social-ecological systems need novel learning environments that engage multi-stakeholder participation. Emerging partnerships are essential to accomplish the Sustainable Development Agenda of the United Nations. In 2017, a multisectoral group committed to drylands stewardship founded the ‘International Network for Drylands Sustainability (Spanish acronym ‘RISZA’) to foster novel transformative learning environments and co-generate useful knowledge with local transdisciplinary partnerships including academics, government representatives, civil society members, NGOs, and indigenous groups, for integrated drylands assessments, social-ecological conservation, restoration, and development projects, and for guiding adaptive management and policy development. RISZA’s operational framework was co-designed with Transdisciplinarity, Social-ecological System (SES), Interculturality, and Governance as main pillars. A long-term initiative that emanated from this framework is the ‘Social-ecological Participatory Observatories (SEPO)’ project. It generates novel spaces to collectively produce, compile, and exchange knowledge, bringing together interested stakeholders of a particular SES to jointly understand how to put resilience, adaptation, and transformative learning into practice in project co-design and co-development, and in participatory policy making to achieve dryland sustainability. The objective of this session is to share the experiences of different stakeholders linked to SEPO representative of diverse Mexican dryland contexts, and to motivate the implementation of similar transformative learning environments in other drylands worldwide. We will highlight how social innovations can generate enabling environments guiding fundamental change at the local scale. We propose to organize a participatory roundtable discussion on drylands stewardship, where i) we will share experiences on knowledge sharing and co-production, intercultural dialogue, and transdisciplinary research through the lens of smallholder farmers, indigenous groups, NGOs, government representatives, and early and mid-career researchers from different disciplines, and ii) the roundtable participants will engage in conversations with the audience to explore the type of social, policy, institutional, and behavioral shifts needed for dryland stewardship potentially facilitated by SEPO.

Organizer(s): David Barklin

The session would be organized as a roundtable discussion with the participation of knowledgeable people from different ethnic groups in Mesoamerica. Each of the participants is actively involved in the organization of social, political, productive and environmental activities, promoting strategies to consolidate alternatives for community and environmental well-being. They offer leadership in assuring that their traditional knowledge systems and world-views guide local decision-making and community organization, while also collaborating with others to build alliances on regional, national, and international levels. A tentative list of participants includes:

- Juan Carlos Sánchez Antonio, a Zapotec philosopher collaborating with communities, teaches at the Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca

- Eliseo Martínez Hernández, an Ayuuk (Mixe) with a degree in Community Development actively involved in promoting a diversified program of activities to diversify the productive base, involving new generations in assuming leadership roles as part of the personal of the local campus of the Autonomous Communal University of Oaxaca.

- Josefina Mata Ceja, a Cora school teacher actively involved in consolidating community activities integrating care of a marine environment and socio-political institutions to assure collective well-being.

- Jaime Martínez Luna, a Zapotec anthropologist, was instrumental in creating the Autonomous Communal University of Oaxaca and its first Rector. He is widely respected for having systematized the concept of “communalidad” (together with his Ayuuk colleague Floriberto Díaz), an indigenous formulation of Oaxacan cosmovisions.

- Aldegundo González Álvarez, a Masewal (Nahua) who has played a key leadership role in the Union of Cooperatives Tosepan, the largest formal indigenous organization in Mexico who collaborated in the 2 volume Codice Masewal that explains the central role of the cosmovision Yeknemilis in the group’s 45 year history.

- Luis Fernando Jerónimo Juárez, a Pure´pecha economist (in the central Mexican state of Michoacán), participates in the community of Cherán following its dramatic declaration of autonomy from organized crime in the region and from the institutional tethers that limit people’s ability to govern themselves to promote local well-being and environmental balance.

Download the List of Sessions (pdf)!

Theme 1: The State of the World

100P Posters

101R Systemic Shocks in a Tele-Entangled World: Repercussions on Land Change

102R Examining the Causes, Consequences, and Responses to Increasing Land Consolidation and Inequality

103R Land Epistemologies in a Changing Climate: Method, Theory, Praxis

104R Abandonment of rural and urban landscapes: understanding the gradient, drivers and implications

105R The role of shifting cultivation for sustainable land use and livelihoods

106R Redefining Landscapes: The Impact of GeoAI and Big Data in Earth Observation

107R Beyond land-use and land-cover: insights from new biodiversity indicators on agriculture-driven impacts on nature

108R The impacts of armed conflicts and illicit activities on land systems

110R Understanding the Dynamics, Vulnerabilities, and Potential for Instability within The Climate-Food-Urbanization Nexus

111R Farmland infrastructure and its impacts on agricultural land systems

112R Understanding the changing geographies of livestock ranching in Latin America

113R New remote sensing indicators for better understanding of land-use processes

114R Reterritorialization in the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico) at the Intersection of Public Policy, Infrastructure Development and Conservation

116R Climate Action on Land: Research Presentations

117R Pathways to Sustainable and Just Land Systems in the Brazilian Cerrado

118R Terrestrial Ecosystem Monitoring for forest conservation

119R Experiences in integrating social-ecological monitoring in mountain land systems observatories

120R Conservation as a land use

121R Land-Cover/Land-Use Changes in Latin America: Actionable Science and Sustainability Implications

150N Community engagement best practices and its role in global change research in the tropics (INVITED ABSTRACTS ONLY)

151N The critical role of in-country partners for understanding land system dynamics in contested land systems

152N Land-Use/Cover Changes in Latin America – Actionable Science, Policy Relevant Research and Implementation

180T Metrics That Make a Difference: How to Analyze Change and Error (INVITED ABSTRACTS ONLY)

181T Harnessing Machine Learning for Land Use Land Cover Change Modeling (INVITED ABSTRACTS ONLY)

Theme 2: Imagining the Future(s)

200P Posters

201R Understanding social ecological trajectories for enhancing a resilience

202R Evolving Landscapes: Navigating Past and Future Pathways in Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) Programmes

203R Monitoring agricultural and land system transitions in the Global South using Earth observation and microeconomic Data

204R Games for research and learning under uncertain futures

205R Behavioural Land Systems Models for Imagining and Evaluating Alternative Futures

206R Models and scenarios for just and equitable land use pathways towards sustainable futures for nature, climate and people

207R Navigating the Present and Future Landscapes: Advances and Challenges in Land-Change Modeling

208R Coastal Landscapes in Transition

209R Policy innovation to ensure additionality from payments for ecosystem services

210R Telecoupled impacts, feedbacks and spillovers of international and transnational policies and governance initiatives

211R The role of smallholders in future land systems

212R Exploring Alternative Futures in Land Use Models: Community Engagement and Social Movement led Deep Transformations

213R Modeling Forestry - Agriculture Interactions and Sustainable Development

214R Modelling social-ecological systems across scale: calling for new vistas and solutions in the Anthropocene

215R Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)

216R Territory: complex system of social; cultural; political; economic interrelationships; and processes that affect it

217R The role of land-use in achieving climate and biodiversity objectives: towards more holistic scenario assessment

218R In search of peri-urban sustainability: building the inter and transdisciplinary perspective from socio-ecological systems.

219R Co-Production of Land Systems – Research Designs, Methods and different Roles of Actors and their Knowledge

250N Play a mini-scenathon to reconcile local objectives with global sustainability

251N Challenges and opportunities of jurisdictional approaches (INVITED ABSTRACTS ONLY)

252N Resilient Urban Futures: Leveraging Land Systems Science in Local Planning

253N: Exploring Science-based Pathways for Sustainability: experiences from the community

280T Emerging Technology in REDD: Unplanned Deforestation Allocated Risk Modeling and Mapping Procedure (UDef-ARP) (INVITED ABSTRACTS ONLY)

Theme 3: Enabling Transformative Change

300P Posters

301R Restoring trees inside and outside of forests: Landscape and human impacts and drivers

302R Identifying, monitoring, and governing commodity-driven land use change in non-forest natural ecosystems

303R Designing for impact: success and failures of forest-risk commodity policies and governance mechanisms.

304R Mapping Social-Ecological Land Systems in Latin America

305R Sustainability transformations around protected areas - the case for buffer zones

306R Relational governance, state capacity, and sustainable land use across the tropics

307R Private Sector Initiatives in Agriculture: Navigating Challenges for Transformative Sustainability in Land Use

310R Conservation for a telecoupled world: exploring the Connected Conservation model through tropical mega-fire and mining

311R Exploring Transdisciplinary and Actionable Knowledge Co-Production to Foster Bottom-up Land System Transformation

312R Achieving Sustainable Food Systems

313R From global to local: Transitions to healthy diets and the implications to food and land sustainability

315R Implementing traceability in agricultural supply chains to combat deforestation

316R Transforming the food and land use sector to achieve climate and sustainable development goals

317R Supply Chain Interventions to Save Tropical Forests: Potential for Transformative Change?

318R The Impact of Energy Transitions on Land Use Change

319R Debating the Use of Offsetting to Govern Land Use Transitions

320R Reconciling rural development and biodiversity conservation: policy challenges in Mexico and Latin America

321R From Myth to Action: Women, Minorities, and the Path to Sustainable Land Use

322R Infrastructures of inequality in forests and forest lands: Flows of commodities, finance and ideas to influence policy for transformative change

324R Tailoring land use policies to effectively achieve biodiversity, food and climate goals

325R Balancing the Energy Transition: Assessing Land Use Trade-Offs and Proactive Land Management to Mitigate Conflicts

350N What makes ecosystem restoration successful? How can it avoid failure?

351N Co-producing knowledge and practice in forest-based carbon offsetting among communities in Oaxaca, Mexico (INVITED ABSTRACTS ONLY)

352N Realizing environmental human rights: Mapping Injustices and Enabling Transformative Changes (INVITED ABSTRACTS ONLY)

353N Interlinkages between land systems and authoritarianism and populism, the rationality crisis, and algorithmic social media (INVITED ABSTRACTS ONLY)